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Keepnews was born in the Bronx on March 2, 1923.[1] He graduated from Columbia University with a degree in English in 1943. Subsequently, he was involved in bombing raids over Japan in the final months of World War II, before returning for graduate studies at Columbia in 1946.[2]

While working as an editor for the book publishers Simon & Schuster, Keepnews moonlighted as editor of The Record Changer, a small jazz magazine, after fellow Columbia graduate Bill Grauer became its owner in 1948. Keepnews wrote one of the earliest profiles of Thelonious Monk, then little known, for the publication.[1]

In 1952 Grauer and Keepnews produced a series of reissues on RCA Victor's Label "X".

The following year, in 1953, Grauer and Keepnews founded Riverside Records, which was initially devoted to reissue projects in the traditional and swing jazz idioms. "It was an act of more than moderate lunacy, to start a business on nothing but enthusiasm", he once said years later. "We had the arrogance of ignorance."[3]

Pianist Randy Weston was the first modern jazz artist signed by the label as a conscious move into the jazz scene of the day. According to Keepnews, Grauer heard him at the Music Inn in the Berkshires, Massachusetts, in 1953, and persuaded his partner to sign him after Keepnews had heard Weston for himself; he had learnt not to trust Grauer's musical taste.[4]

Their most significant early move came in 1955, when they were made aware of the availability of Thelonious Monk, who was able to terminate his contract with Prestige Records and sign with Riverside. Monk was not easy for Keepnews to work with: "He was as demanding of other people as he was of himself, but he was self-contained and also impatient. He knew what he wanted, but I didn’t, so I had to catch on to this express train as it went roaring by,"[3]

During this period, Grauer concentrated on business affairs, which ultimately proved to be marred by "creative accounting".[6] In mid-December 1963, Grauer died following a sudden heart attack, and Keepnews was unable to save the company from the bankruptcy that followed in mid-1964.

Late in 1972 Keepnews relocated to San Francisco as director of jazz A&R at Fantasy Records, which had just acquired the Riverside masters. Milestone was bought by Fantasy in the same year, and signed Sonny Rollins, whom Keepnews had worked with at Riverside. At Fantasy Keepnews oversaw the repackaging of the company's holdings in the idiom as "twofer"s, including many albums he had produced at Riverside. Bill Evans joined Fantasy at this time, reuniting their previous partnership; however his manager, Helen Keane, later a successful producer in her own right, took charge of Evans's recording. After resigning as Vice-President of Fantasy in 1980[7] because, as he said, "even under the best of circumstances, I can't be happy working for someone else," Keepnews returned to freelancing.

Orrin Keepnews won several Recording Academy Grammy Awards in the 1980s: Best Album Notes for The "Interplay" Sessions performed by Bill Evans in 1984 and Best Historical Album and Best Album Notes for Thelonious Monk: The Complete Riverside Recordings in 1988. A collection of his writings, The View from Within, was published in 1988.[9]

In the CD era Keepnews continued to be responsible for extensive reissue compilations, including the Duke Ellington 24-CD RCA Centennial set in 1999 and Riverside's Keepnews Editions series.

Keepnews died at the age of 91 on March 1, 2015.[1] He was married to Lucile (née Kaufman) from 1948 until her death in 1989. His second wife, a clothing designer, Martha Egan, survived him. His two sons are Peter Keepnews, an editor at The New York Times and a writer on jazz subjects, and David Keepnews, a nurse and attorney who is Dean of the School of Nursing at Long Island University, Brooklyn.